So why can't you procedurally set up points and then instance the pieces on top of them? You can just set up point attributes that control how the pieces get instanced. You can manually manipulate their transforms anywhere in the pipeline. There's no need to say you're going to manually place every piece, when I know no one is going to do that if you really have 400K pieces.

edward
There's no need to say you're going to manually place every piece, when I know no one is going to do that if you really have 400K pieces.

I've been working on a ship in Blender that has about 10,000 pieces so far, and will have about 25,000 once it's finished. Of course had to stop because Blender couldn't handle it.

There is a lot of copy and paste, and a lot of iteration, but it's like asking someone to procedurally sculpt a character.

edward
So why can't you procedurally set up points and then instance the pieces on top of them?

Hard to visualise what you are doing if you are just manipulating points. The workflow needs to be very snappy, select-copy-paste-move, select-copy-past-move, select several pieces copy-paste-move. Going back and forth between point view and the full geometry would be very slow.

Afterwards variants could be made procedurally, but the initial version would need to be very manual.

Sounds like you you need better hardware tbh.

KalciferKandari
I've been working on a ship in Blender that has about 10,000 pieces so far, and will have about 25,000 once it's finished. Of course had to stop because Blender couldn't handle it.

There is a lot of copy and paste, and a lot of iteration, but it's like asking someone to procedurally sculpt a character.

There's almost a laughable amount of procedural structure in a ship. In fact, a ship is almost like one of those canonical procedural modeling examples. Forget everything I said about doing it at the object-level. Just do it at the SOP (ie. geometry level) and put down File SOPs (loaded as packed primitives) as you go. (The packed disk primitives get instanced based on filename.) For most parts of the ship, create low poly representations of your basic structure and then copy your instances to the points of this proxy representation.

I think your stumbling block here is how to think procedurally. This video is perfect for you: https://vimeo.com/164776668 [vimeo.com] . A more recent video (but less relevant to this discussion) is the wall example at 19min into https://vimeo.com/209223299 [vimeo.com] . You also google for “Houdini procedural modelling”. Perhaps try some doing some small examples of your ship in Houdini to understand how proceduralism works.

KalciferKandari
Hard to visualise what you are doing if you are just manipulating points. The workflow needs to be very snappy, select-copy-paste-move, select-copy-past-move, select several pieces copy-paste-move. Going back and forth between point view and the full geometry would be very slow.

It doesn't have to be that way at all in Houdini. You typically display the result and manipulate the parameters upstream.

This thread has just devolved into a rhetoric of ‘do it procedurally’, but the question is specifically asking how to do something manually.

Thanks for the responses, but this is going nowhere.

Hi Kalcifer,
i think you need to first develop the tool you want, this wont come out of thebox. And i think THIS could be done in Houdini.

kind regards

Olaf

KalciferKandari
This thread has just devolved into a rhetoric of ‘do it procedurally’, but the question is specifically asking how to do something manually.

Thanks for the responses, but this is going nowhere.

Olaf Finkbeiner
Hi Kalcifer,
i think you need to first develop the tool you want, this wont come out of thebox. And i think THIS could be done in Houdini.

kind regards

Olaf

For a completely manual approach, load your ‘piece’ using a file sop and ‘pack’ the object ( or load it as a packed object if your prefer ).

Add a “copy and transform SOP”. Now select your pieces and move them using the edit sop. Whenever you need a new piece, increase the number on your “Copy and Transform SOP”. This doesn't quite give you the copy and paste workflow you're suggesting, but the result is the same. Packed Primitives are essentially instances, so you get the best of both worlds. Some python scripting could probably get you a ‘copy and paste’ type workflow using shelf tools or radial menus. Essentially taking a selection, isolating it, adding a transform node, and merge it back into the stream.

Bit late to the show @sakeating, that was already suggested by @BabaJ, probably the only good suggestion in the thread.

I'm unlikely to do it (edit: ‘it’ being to create Python scripts to add the suggested functionality) because I'm a one-man show so I don't really have the resources.

I got similar replies on the Unreal Engine forums about the same project, and like I said there, I didn't think going into the it that it would be this difficult and there would be so few tools. It's rigid-body, you would think that is as simple as it gets.

KalciferKandari
Bit late to the show @sakeating, that was already suggested by @BabaJ, probably the only good suggestion in the thread.

I'm unlikely to do it because I'm a one-man show so I don't really have the resources.

I got similar replies on the Unreal Engine forums about the same project, and like I said there, I didn't think going into the it that it would be this difficult and there would be so few tools. It's rigid-body, you would think that is as simple as it gets.

EDIT: Actually, taking a look at this. Just use duplicate on a packed object and you have the workflow you described? You can do it all from the viewport if you switch your radial menu to the Poly Modelling menu.

Duplicate is under adjust.

sakeating
Actually, taking a look at this. Just use duplicate on a packed object and you have the workflow you described? You can do it all from the viewport if you switch your radial menu to the Poly Modelling menu.

That is true. Though it will create an enormous string of ‘Copy and Transform’ nodes, and by extension, ‘Blast’, and ‘Edit’ nodes. I'll have to see how that turns out when it comes to animation, armatures, grouping, materials, and simulation.

Edit: I am curious as to how bad that enormous string of ‘Copy and Transform’ nodes will be for Houdini's memory usage. In this scenario it could almost be seen as a memory leak because of the sheer amount of redundant information that is being kept by having an ever-increasing amount rather than just a 1 for each unique object.

Edit 2: The ‘Duplicate’ button has the workflow I want, but it's not going to work unless there is a way of stopping the resultant string of nodes from getting out of control.

So close, yet so far.